The invention relates to a cutting installation for a fabric web comprising an unwinding unit, a downstream dancer unit serving as a buffer, and a downstream cutting frame with a cutting unit arranged thereon. A gripper beam extending parallel to the cutting unit can be displaced across the longitudinal direction of the cutting frame along laterally extending rails.
Such a cutting installation, which is known through prior use, has only one gripper beam, which can be displaced across the length of the cutting frame between a front position and a rear position. The gripper beam in its front position uses suitable pickup means to grasp the end of the fabric web buffered in the dancer unit and pulls the web across the cutting table by moving along the rails mounted on the cutting frame. The gripper beam stops in the cutting position because, based on conventional cutting technology, the fabric can be cut only when stationary. Subsequently the gripper beam transports the cut piece of fabric web to a delivery stack located below the cutting frame. Thereafter, the gripper beam returns to its front position for the next cycle. The drawback of the known machine arrangement is that the required unproductive return stroke of the gripper beam limits the capacity of the cutting installation despite relatively high traveling speeds of the gripper beam.
The object of the invention is to increase the capacity of a cutting installation with the initially described features. This object as well as advantageous embodiments and further refinements of the invention are described in the claims, which follow this description.